Using task cards in interactive math notebooks

Do you use task cards in your classroom? While they are great for math centers, you may not have a math station in your classroom. While they are fun for a game of Scoot, if you have a lot of students or a wide range in math abilities, a game might not be the best thing for your kids.

Interactive notebooks are a great way to build your own textbook. You can use task cards as homework (glue in 4 on Monday morning, and you have a problem for each night Mon-Thursday!) or begin your morning that way. If you are using INBs for morning work, you can give your students 5-10 minutes to complete their problem, and then swap notebooks with a neighbor and have them check their work.

Math Task Cards with a Beloved Story

I have created a set of Little Red Riding Hood word problem task cards that are sure to delight even your math-phobic kiddos. Word problems are absolutely essential to practice.

While it's important to understand math facts and concepts, you need to be able to apply them.


This is why most of my task cards are word problems!

Using a familiar story with a bit of humor goes a long way to connect mathematics with kids. They will also be practicing reading comprehension with word problems, which is why it might make sense to work in pairs: try a strong reader with a student who is strong in math!

If your students still need a lot of space to write out their ideas, try it out with one task card per page. Make sure they show their thought process and don't just take a guess!

If you print task cards smaller (these are at 2 pages per sheet, so you get 8 task cards on a page), you can fit two of them on a notebook page.

They are glued at the top, and then the page is creased down the center.

Each problem gets a column.

All of the steps are labeled in the margin, with the answer circled or boxed in at the bottom (don't forget the label!).

A variation on using two task cards per page is to make them a lift-the-flap tab. Using the outer margin as the flap to glue down, your students can then perform their calculations underneath the flap. I personally prefer the previous method because then you can refer to the problem easily while you work on it instead of flipping back and forth, but use whichever style works best for you!

All of the problems shown above are from the following resource Little Red Riding Hood Word Problem Task Cards for grades 2 & 3: